Year of birthPetraChaadaevanot exactly known. Longinov says that he was born on May 27, 1793, Zhikharev considers the year of his birth to be 1796, Sverbeev vaguely refers him to "the first years of the last decade of the 18th century." By his mother, Peter was the nephew of the princes Shcherbatovs and the grandson of a famous Russian historian. In the hands of this relative, he received an initial education, remarkable for that time, completed by listening to lectures at Moscow University.
Enlisted as a cadet in the Semyonovsky regiment, he participated in the war of 1812 and subsequent hostilities. Serving then in the Life Hussar Regiment, Chaadaev became close friends with the young Pushkin, who was then studying at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. According to Longinov, "Chadaev contributed to the development of Pushkin, more than all kinds of professors with his lectures." The nature of the conversations between friends can be judged from Pushkin's poems "To Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev". "To the portrait of Chaadaev" and others.
It fell to Chaadaev to save Pushkin from exile in Siberia that threatened him or imprisonment in the Solovetsky Monastery. Upon learning of the danger, Chaadaev, who was then adjutant to the commander of the Guards Corps, Prince. Vasilchikov, managed to get a meeting with Karamzin not at the appointed hour and persuaded him to stand up for Pushkin. Pushkin repaid Chaadaev with warm friendship. Among the "most necessary objects for life" he demanded that a portrait of Chaadaev be sent to Mikhailovskoye. Pushkin sends him the first copy of "Boris Godunov" and is keenly interested in his opinion about this work; he also sends a whole message from Mikhailovsky, in which he expresses his passionate desire as soon as possible in the company of Chaadaev "to honor, judge, scold, revive freedom-loving hopes."
— Chaadaev's famous letter is deeply skeptical towards Russia. “For the soul,” he writes, “there is a dietary content, just like for the body; the ability to subordinate it to this content is necessary. I know that I am repeating an old saying, but in our country it has all the advantages of news. miserable features of our social education, that truths long known in other countries and even among peoples who are in many respects less educated than we are are just being discovered with us. to one of the great families of mankind, neither to the West nor to the East, we have no traditions of either. We exist, as it were, outside of time, and the universal education of the human race has not touched us. This wondrous connection of human ideas through the ages, this The history of human understanding, which has brought it to its present state in other countries of the world, had no influence on us. ... Look around you. Everything seems to be on the move. We all seem to be strangers. No one has a sphere of a definite existence, there are no good customs for anything, not only rules, there is not even a family center; there is nothing that would bind, that would awaken our sympathy, disposition; there is nothing permanent, indispensable: everything passes, flows, leaving no trace either in appearance or in yourself. At home, we seem to be staying, in families as strangers, as if wandering in cities, and even more than the tribes wandering through our steppes, because these tribes are more attached to their deserts than we are to our cities "...
Pointing out that all peoples "have a period of strong, passionate, unconscious activity", that such epochs constitute the "time of the youth of peoples", Chaadaev finds that "we have nothing of the kind", that "at the very beginning we had wild barbarism, then gross superstition, then cruel, humiliating domination, the traces of which in our way of life have not been completely erased to this day.This is the sad story of our youth ... There are no enchanting memories in the memory, there are no strong instructive examples in folk traditions.Take a look through all the centuries we have lived, all the space of the earth occupied by us, you will not find a single memory that would stop you, not a single monument that would tell you the past vividly, strongly, picturesquely ... We appeared in the world as illegitimate children , without inheritance, without connection with the people who preceded us, did not learn for themselves any of the instructive lessons of the past. Each of us must himself bind the broken thread of the family, by which we were connected with the whole of humanity. We owe a hammerto hammer into one's head what has become a habit, an instinct with others... We grow, but do not mature, we move forward, but along some indirect direction that does not lead to the goal... We belong to nations that do not seem to still constitute a necessary part of mankind, but exist in order to teach some great lesson to the world over time ... All the peoples of Europe have developed certain ideas. These are the ideas of duty, law, truth, order. And they make up not only the history of Europe, but its atmosphere. It is more than history, more than psychology: it is the physiology of the European. What will you replace it with?...
The syllogism of the West is unknown to us. There's more to our best minds than flimsiness. The best ideas, from a lack of connection and consistency, like barren ghosts, numb in our brain... Even in our glance I find something extremely indefinite, cold, somewhat similar to the physiognomy of peoples standing on the lowest rungs of the social ladder... According to our local position between East and West, resting one elbow on China, the other on Germany, we should combine in ourselves the two great principles of understanding: imagination and reason, should combine in our civic education the history of the whole world. But this is not the destiny that has fallen to our lot. Hermits in the world, we gave him nothing, took nothing from him, did not attach a single idea to the mass of ideas of mankind, did nothing to improve human understanding and distorted everything that this improvement told us ... Not a single useful thought increased in our barren soil, not a single great truth has arisen among us. We did not invent anything ourselves, and from everything that was invented by others, we borrowed only a deceptive appearance and useless luxury ... I repeat again: we lived, we live, as a great lesson for distant posterity, who will certainly use it, but in the present tense, which no matter what we say, we constitute a gap in the order of understanding. " Having pronounced such a sentence on our past, present and partly future, Ch. carefully proceeds to his main thought and at the same time to explaining the phenomenon he indicated. The root of evil, in his opinion, is in that we accepted the "new formation" from a different source than the West did.
"Driven by evil fate, we borrowed the first seeds of moraland intellectual enlightenment from the corrupted Byzantium, despised by all peoples", they borrowed, moreover, when "petty vanity had just torn Byzantium from the world brotherhood", and therefore "they accepted from her an idea distorted by human passion." Hence all that followed .
"Despite the name of Christians, we did not budge, while Western Christianity majestically walked along the path outlined by its divine founder." Ch. himself raises the question: “Are we not Christians, is education possible only according to the European model?”, And he answers this way: “Without a doubt we are Christians, but aren’t the Abyssinians Christians?
Aren't the Japanese educated?.. But do you really think that these miserable deviations from divine and human truths will bring heaven down to earth? ". In Europe, everything is permeated with a mysterious force that reigned autocratically for a number of centuries." This thought fills the entire end of the Philosophical Letter. “Look at the picture of the complete development of the new society and you will see that Christianity transforms all human benefits into its own, replaces material need everywhere with moral need, excites in the world of thought these great debates that you will not encounter in the history of other epochs, other societies.. You will see that everything was created by him and only by him: earthly life, and social life, and family, and fatherland, and science, and poetry, and mind, and imagination, and memory, and hopes, and delights, and sorrows " . But all this applies to Western Christianity; other branches of Christianity are barren. Ch. does not draw any practical conclusions from this. It seems to us that his letter caused a storm not by his own, although undoubted, but not at all pronounced Catholic tendencies - he developed them much deeper in subsequent letters - but only by severe criticism of the past and present of Russia.
There are three letters in all, but there is reason to think that in the interval between the first (printed in Teleskop) and the so-called second, there were more letters, apparently irretrievably lost. In the "second" letter (we will give further quotations in our translation) Chaadaev expresses the idea that the progress of mankind is directed by the hand of Providence and moves through the chosen peoples and chosen people; the source of eternal light has never been extinguished among human societies; man walked to the path determined for him only in the light of the truths revealed to him by higher reason. “Instead of obsequiously accepting the senseless system of mechanical improvement of our nature, so clearly refuted by the experience of all ages, it is impossible not to see that man, left to himself, always walked, on the contrary, along the path of endless degeneration. If there were epochs from time to time progress in all peoples, moments of enlightenment in the life of mankind, lofty impulses of reason, then nothing proves the continuity and constancy of such a movement.True forward movement and the constant presence of progress is noticed only in that society of which we are members and which is not the product of human hands. We undoubtedly accepted what was worked out by the ancients before us, took advantage of it and thus closed the ring of the great chain of times, but it does not at all follow from this that people would have reached the state in which they now find themselves without that historical phenomenon, which is unconditionally has no antecedents, is independent of human ideas, outside of any necessary connection of things and separates the ancient world from the new world. It goes without saying that Ch. is talking here about the rise of Christianity. Without this phenomenon, our society would inevitably perish, as perished all the societies of antiquity. Christianity found the world "perverted, bloodied, lied about." In ancient civilizations, there was no solid beginning lying inside them. "The profound wisdom of Egypt, the charming beauty of Ionia, the strict virtues of Rome, the dazzling brilliance of Alexandria - what have you become? Brilliant civilizations nurtured by all the forces of the earth, associated with all the glories, with all the heroes, with all dominion over the universe, with the greatest sovereigns whom ever produced the earth, with world sovereignty - how could you be razed to the ground? is it to destroy, overturn a magnificent building and plow up the very place on which it stood? "But it was not the barbarians who destroyed the ancient world. It was already "a decomposed corpse and the barbarians scattered only its ashes to the wind." This cannot happen with the new world, because European society is a single family of Christian peoples. European society "for a number of centuries rested on the basis of the federation, which was broken only by the reformation; before this sad event, the peoples of Europe looked at themselves only as a single social organism, geographically divided into different states, but constituting a single whole in a moral sense; between these peoples there was no other public law, except for the decrees of the church; wars were presented as internecine strife, a common interest inspired everyone, one and the same tendency set the whole European world in motion.
The history of the Middle Ages was in the literal sense of the word the history of one people—the Christian people. The movement of moral consciousness was its basis; purely political events stood in the background; all this was revealed with particular clarity in the religious wars, that is, in the events that the philosophy of the last century was so horrified by. Voltaire very aptly notes that wars over opinions occurred only among Christians; but it was not necessary to confine oneself to merely stating a fact, it was necessary to rise to the understanding of the cause of such a unique phenomenon. It is clear that the realm of thought could not establish itself in the world otherwise than by giving the very principle of thought a full reality. And if now the state of things has changed, then this was the result of a schism, which, having destroyed the unity of thought, thereby destroyed the unity of society. But the foundation remains and is still the same, and Europe is still a Christian country, no matter what she does, whatever she says ... In order for a real civilization to be destroyed, it would be necessary for the whole globe to turn upside down, to repeat a revolution similar to that which gave the earth its true form. To extinguish to the ground all the sources of our enlightenment, it would take at least a second worldwide flood. If, for example, one of the hemispheres were swallowed up, then what would be left on the other would be enough to renew the human spirit. The thought that is supposed to conquer the universe will never stop, will never perish, or at least will not perish until it is commanded by the One who put this thought into the human soul. The world was coming to unity, but this great cause was prevented by the reformation, returning it to a state of fragmentation (desunité) of paganism. "At the end of the second letter, Chaadaev directly expresses the idea that only indirectly made its way in the first letter. "That the papacy was a human institution, that the incoming elements in it are created by human hands - I readily admit this, but the essence of panism comes from the very spirit of Christianity ... Who does not marvel at the extraordinary fate of the papacy? Deprived of its human brilliance, it only became stronger, and the indifference shown towards it only strengthens and ensures its existence even more ... It centralizes the thought of Christian peoples, attracts them to each other, reminds them of the supreme principle of their beliefs and , being imprinted with the seal of a heavenly character, soars above the world of material interests. In the third letter, Ch. develops the same thoughts, illustrating them with his views on Moses, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Epicurus, Homer, etc. Returning to Russia and to his view of the Russians, who "do not belong, in essence, to which of the systems of the moral world, but their social surface is adjacent to the West", Ch. recommends "to do everything possible to prepare the way for future generations." “Since we cannot leave them what we ourselves did not have: beliefs, a mind brought up by time, a clearly defined personality, developed over a long, animated, active, rich in results, intellectual life, opinions, let us leave them, at least at least a few ideas, which, although we have not found them ourselves, being passed down from generation to generation, will have more of a traditional element, and therefore more power, more fruitfulness, than our own thoughts. in vain we will walk the earth." The short fourth letter of Chaadaev is devoted to architecture.
Finally, the first and several lines from the second chapter of Chaadaev's "Apology of a Madman" are also known. Here the author makes some concessions, agrees to recognize some of his former opinions as exaggerations, but laughs angrily and caustically at the fall upon him for the first philosophical letter from "love for fatherland" society. "There are various kinds of love for the fatherland: a Samoyed, for example, loving his native snows, weakening his eyesight, a smoky yurt in which he spends half his life crouching, the rancid fat of his deer, surrounding him with a nauseating atmosphere - this Samoyed, no doubt, loves homeland differently than the English citizen, who is proud of the institutions and high civilization of his glorious island, loves his homeland ... Love for the fatherland is a very good thing, but there is something higher than it: love of truth. Further, Chaadaev sets out his opinions on the history of Russia. Briefly, this story is expressed as follows: "Peter the Great found only a sheet of paper and with his powerful hand wrote on it: Europe and the West."
And a great man did a great thing. "But now, a new school (Slavophiles) has appeared. The West is no longer recognized, the work of Peter the Great is denied, it is considered desirable to return to the desert again. Forgetting everything that the West has done for us, being ungrateful to the great man who civilized us, to Europe, who formed us, renounce both Europe and the great man. In its ardent zeal, the latest patriotism declares us the most beloved children of the East. Why on earth, says this patriotism, shall we seek light from the Western peoples? home of all germs of a social order infinitely better than the social order of Europe?Left to ourselves, our bright mind, the fruitful principle hidden in the bowels of our mighty nature and especially our holy faith, we would soon leave behind all these peoples, stagnant in error and lies. And what are we to envy in the West? Its religious wars, its pope, its chivalry, its Inquisition? All these things are good, there is nothing to say! Indeed, the West is the birthplace of science and deep wisdom?
Everyone knows that the birthplace of all this is the East. Let us return to this East, with which we are in contact everywhere, from where we once took our beliefs, our laws, our virtues, in a word, everything that made us the most powerful people on earth. The Old East is passing into eternity, and aren't we its rightful heirs? His wonderful traditions must live among us forever, all his great and mysterious truths, the preservation of which was bequeathed to him from the beginning of centuries ... You now understand the origin of the storm that has recently burst over me and see that a real revolution is taking place among us, a passionate reaction against enlightenment, against Western ideas, against that enlightenment and those ideas that made us what we are, and the fruit of which was even the real movement itself, the reaction itself. "The idea that in our past there was nothing creative, Chaadaev apparently wanted to develop in the second chapter of the Apologia, but it contains only a few lines: "There is a fact that dominates our historical movement in all its ages, passing through our entire history, containing in a certain sense the whole philosophy, manifesting itself in all epochs our social life, which determines its character, which is at the same time an essential element of our political greatness, and the true cause of our intellectual impotence: this fact is a geographical fact. Publisher of works Chaadaev, Prince. Gagarin, says the following in a note: "Here the manuscript ends and there are no signs that it has ever been continued." After the incident with the Philosophical Letter, Chaadaev lived almost without a break in Moscow for 20 years. Although in all these years he did not show himself anything special, Herzen testifies that if Chaadaev was in the company, then "no matter how dense the crowd was, the eye would immediately find him." Chaadaev died in Moscow on April 14, 1856.
"He in Rome would be Brutus"
160 years ago, in April 1856, Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev died in Moscow. A participant in the Battle of Borodino and a former hussar, a philosopher declared insane, and a spiritual forerunner of the Slavophiles and Westernizers, he simply could not help but get into history. He got into it as soon as he published the first of his "Philosophical Letters" ...
Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev (1794-1856). Portrait by Rakov from an original by Cosimus 1842–1845. 1864
In the autumn of 1836, in the Mother See and in the capital, sheets of the 15th book of the Telescope were cut with bone, wooden or metal knives, where, among other things, the first of the “Philosophical Letters to Madame ***” was placed in the “Science and Art” section. » . Placed without indicating the name of the author, only with the designation of the place and time of creation: “Necropolis. 1829, December 17" yes with an editorial note:
“These letters were written by one of our compatriots. A number of them make up a whole, imbued with one spirit, developing one main idea. The loftiness of the subject, the depth and breadth of views, the strict sequence of conclusions and the energetic sincerity of expression give them a special right to the attention of thinking readers. In the original they are written in French. The proposed translation does not have all the advantages of the original regarding the exterior finish. We are pleased to inform readers that we have permission to decorate our magazine with others from this series of letters.
The author, on the other hand, was looking forward to the reaction from the “thinking readers”, believing that the prevailing state of mind of his compatriots would be amazement and delight. The epistole, on which he placed such hopes, was ready, as noted in the note, as early as 1829, but there was still no opportunity to convey it to a wide audience and thereby attract the attention of the first reader in Russia - the Emperor himself. Based on this, the author handed over the manuscript Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin and, having received no answer, bombarded him in 1831 with plaintive letters:
“Well, my friend, what has become of my manuscript? There has been no news from you since the very day of your departure”… “Dear friend, I wrote to you asking you to return my manuscript; I'm waiting for an answer ... "Well, my friend, where did you put my manuscript? Did cholera take her away, or what?”
However, Pushkin at that time was not up to the retired Life Guards Hussar Regiment captain, who was languishing from idleness in Moscow. He himself had already sharpened the pen of a political journalist (remember the composition of the patriotic poem "To the Slanderers of Russia") and was busy with the head of the Third Section Alexander Benckendorff about permission to publish a newspaper, as well as access to state archives for writing the "History of Peter I", which would turn him into a historiographer - a historian at court.
"It's good to be a colonel"
However, the retired captain, the author of letters, also underwent no less amazing metamorphoses. Petr Chaadaev. Inflamed by youthful dreams of a brilliant uniform, in the spring of 1812 he joined the Semyonovsky Life Guards Regiment as a lieutenant, participated in the Battle of Borodino and in a foreign campaign - for his military exploits he was awarded the Order of St. Anna III degree and the Kulm Cross. This was followed by a transfer to the Akhtyrsky Hussar Regiment, and in 1816 - to the Life Guards Hussar Regiment.
Private and chief officer of the Life Guards Hussar Regiment. Pyotr Chaadaev served in the ranks of this regiment in 1816–1820.
In 1820, fortune turned away from the hussar: sent to inform the emperor about the unrest in the Semenovsky regiment, he was late with his message. The sovereign met him coldly, Chaadaev's blood boiled, and soon he resigned, which was accepted. As a result, he retired without a rank award. It was the latter, according to his nephew and first biographer Mikhail Ivanovich Zhikharev, that hurt the pride of the hussar:
“I don’t remember anything, whether Chaadaev regretted the uniform, but he had a rather ridiculous weakness to grieve about the rank for the rest of his life, arguing that it was very good to be a colonel, because, they say, “colonel is a very resonant rank.”
So, Pierre is just a retired captain, and in the salons there are gossip and rumors that he was late with a report because of his passion at bus stops ... with a mirror. And indeed, Chaadaev had a weakness for tweezers, nail files, powder, toilet water and other things, thanks to which you can impress others.
Having divided his property with his brother and decided not to return to Russia, on July 6, 1823, Pyotr Chaadaev left for Europe. He visited England, France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany, and, having not found a place for himself anywhere, as well as not getting rid of the bodily suffering that had befallen him, in June 1826 - in a bad mood - returned to his homeland.
And then a fly in the ointment was poured into his cask of bile: in the border town of Brest-Litovsk, a detailed interrogation was “removed” from him, the purpose of which was to establish the degree of closeness with the convicted Decembrists, and a subscription was taken about his non-participation in any secret societies. It turned out, by the way, that he was not only spiritually nourished in the Masonic lodge of Krakow, where he joined in 1814 and where he received the first two degrees, but “whose name he forgot”, but also, “belonging from 1815 to the Russian East, received the following six degrees ".
N.I. Nadezhdin is a professor at Moscow University, editor and publisher of the Telescope magazine, in which the first of Chaadaev's Philosophical Letters was published.
In the future, Chaadaev lived in solitude, now in Moscow, now outside the city, occasionally paying visits to acquaintances. Anastasia Vasilievna Yakushkina informed her exiled Decembrist husband in a letter dated October 24, 1827, that Pierre Chaadaev spent the whole evening with them.
She found him "very strange": he, like all those who "just recently hit the piety", "extremely exalted and all imbued with the spirit of holiness", argues that "the word" happiness "should be deleted from the lexicon of people who think and meditate”, promises to bring a chapter from Montaigne, “the only one who can be read with interest”, and at the same time “covers his face every minute, straightens up, does not hear what he is told, and then, as if by inspiration, begins to speak” …
Stepan Petrovich Zhikharev, a writer and theatergoer, now known mainly for his memoirs Notes of a Contemporary, in a letter to A.I. Turgenev on July 6, 1829, told that Chaadaev "sits locked up alone, reading and interpreting the Bible and the Church Fathers in his own way." And another observer, already mentioned by us Mikhail Ivanovich Zhikharev noted that Chaadaev was unbearable for all doctors who were tired of him, and only Professor A.A. Alfonsky thought to prescribe appropriate treatment for him - entertainment, and in response to the complaints of the "patient":
“Where will I go, who will I see, how, where will I be?” - promised to take him to the English Club ... Only after visiting the club and seeing that the society did not reject him, but, on the contrary, honors him with attention, Chaadaev "began to recover quickly and noticeably, although he never returned to perfect health."
“I wrote to the Russian Tsar not in Russian…”
Cheered up, Chaadaev soon took up the promotion of his philosophical epistles, hoping with their help to further attract the attention of the public. In the spring of 1831, he gave the manuscript of two letters to Pushkin, who tried to print them in French from the book publisher F.M. Bellizar in St. Petersburg, but without success. Therefore, in the spring of next year, Chaadaev tried to publish at least excerpts from them already in Moscow, but spiritual censorship did not let the publication pass.
In the meantime, in 1833, through Benkendorf, the emperor expressed the wish that Chaadaev serve in the Ministry of Finance for the benefit of the Fatherland. In an explanation dated July 15 addressed to Benckendorff, the retired captain apologized for writing “to the Russian Tsar not in Russian, and he himself was ashamed of it,” because he could not fully express his thoughts in Russian, in which he had not previously written, but in the very In a letter to the emperor, he offered his services in another department - public education, since "he thought a lot about the state of education in Russia."
Pushkin and his friends listen to Mickiewicz's recitation in the salon of Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya. Hood. G.G. Myasoedov. On the left side of the picture, near the column - Pyotr Chaadaev
However, the head of the Third Division drafted a resolution:
“To send him back that I didn’t dare to submit a letter to his sovereign for his benefit, he would be surprised by a dissertation on the shortcomings of our education where he would only look for expressions of gratitude and a modest readiness to educate himself on matters that were completely unknown to him, Chaadaev, for one service, and long-term, can give the right and way to judge the affairs of state, otherwise he gives an opinion of himself that, following the example of the frivolous French, he judges what he does not know.
Thus, Benckendorff expressed the general opinion of the managers of that time: it is easy to give advice to the government without being in the civil service, and if the emperor begins to listen to every clever man who has gained wisdom not on the basis of many years of practice and exercise, but after reading books, then very soon things will in the empire will take on a perverse character.
Tarasov B.N. Chaadaev. M., 1990 (ZhZL series)
ULYANOV N.I."Basmanny philosopher" (thoughts about Chaadaev) // Questions of Philosophy. 1990. No. 8. S. 74–89
Tricks Nadezhdin
Left without service, inactive, but confident in the saving power of a reasonable word, Chaadaev continued to fuss about the publication of his epistles. Thanks to Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev around 1835, the contents of the first of the Philosophical Letters became known in Paris, but even there it did not reach the press. At the beginning of 1836, the sixth and seventh letters were handed over by Chaadaev to V.P. Androsov, who refrained from publishing them.
But then fate sent the "basman philosopher" the editor of the magazine "Telescope", a professor at Moscow University Nikolai Ivanovich Nadezhdin, shortly before returning from a foreign trip. Nadezhdin was educated at a theological school - in a seminary and a theological academy, and already there he repeatedly demonstrated the playfulness of the imagination and the cunning of the mind, so common among the students.
This time, the rector of the university A.V. became the victim of his cunning. Boldyrev, who is also a censor, who on September 29 half-heartedly (drank wine and played cards) listened to Nadezhdin's reading of proof sheets aloud. Moreover, the editor of the "Telescope" skipped certain places during the recitation, thanks to which he received permission to print the 15th issue.
And soon the readers cut the sheets of the magazine and from the "Philosophical letter" of the anonymous person learned all sorts of things hitherto unheard of. That "what other peoples are just a habit, an instinct" we "have to hammer into our heads with a blow of a hammer."
That "we are so amazingly marching in time that as we move forward, the experienced is lost for us forever."
That “we have no inner development, no natural progress at all; old ideas are swept away by new ones, because the latter do not come from the former, but appear in us from nowhere.
That "we accept only completely ready-made ideas" and that "we grow, but we do not mature, we move forward along a curve, that is, along a line that does not lead to the goal."
That “we are like those children who were not forced to reason for themselves, so that when they grow up, there is nothing of their own in them; all their knowledge is superficial, their whole soul is outside of them.”
That "in our best minds there is something even worse than lightness," and "the best ideas, devoid of connection and consistency, like fruitless delusions, are paralyzed in our brain."
Finally, that “alone in the world, we gave nothing to the world, took nothing from the world, we did not contribute a single thought to the mass of human ideas, we did not contribute in any way to the advancement of the human mind, and everything that we got from of this movement, we distorted.
"Lubricant on the Russian nation"
According to the testimony Mikhail Ivanovich Zhikharev, “for about a month, among the whole of Moscow, there was almost no house in which they would not talk about the“ Chaadaev article ”and about the“ Chaadaev story ””.
“Even people who have never been engaged in any literary business,” Chaadaev’s biographer noted, “are complete ignoramuses; ladies, in terms of the degree of intellectual development, not much different from their cooks and henchmen; clerks and officials, bogged down and drowned in embezzlement and bribery; stupid, ignorant, half-mad saints, savages or bigots, gray-haired and wild in drunkenness, debauchery or superstition; young lovers of the motherland and old patriots - all combined in one common cry of damnation and contempt for a man who dared to offend Russia.
As Professor of St. Petersburg University A.V. Nikitenko, there was a suspicion that the article was published “with the intention”, namely, “for the magazine to be banned and for it to raise a fuss”, and that all this was “the affair of a secret party” ... As a result, Boldyrev was dismissed from service, Nadezhdin sent into exile, and Chaadaev was placed under house arrest, declared "insane" and assigned to him for a weekly examination of a doctor.
November 23, 1836 Denis Davydov answered Pushkin to a letter he received by chance:
“Are you asking about Chedaev? As an eyewitness, I can't tell you anything about him; I haven't been to him before and I don't go now.<…> Stroganov told me the whole conversation he had with him; all - from board to board! How he, seeing the inevitable misfortune, confessed to him that he wrote this libel on the Russian nation immediately upon his return from foreign lands, during the madness in which he encroached on his own life; how he tried to blame all the trouble on the journalist and the censor ... But this is simply disgusting, and what’s funny is his grief over what his famous friends, the scientists Balanche, Lamené, Guisot and some German Schusters, will say about recognizing him as insane. Metaphysics!
Also, Denis Davydov expressed his vision of the role and significance of Chaadaev in "Modern Song", where the "basman philosopher" was presented in the hussar manner, as " The confessor of the old ladies, // The little abbot, // What is used to beating in the living rooms // To the little nabatik».
"Apology of a Madman"
And Chaadaev soon took up writing the "Apology of a Madman", where he tried to present all the shortcomings of Russia as her virtues. Now he believed that "we came after others in order to do better than them, so as not to fall into their mistakes, into their delusions and superstitions." Anyone who is inclined to assert that "we are doomed to somehow repeat the whole long series of follies committed by peoples who were in a less favorable position than we are, and again go through all the disasters experienced by them," will find, in the eyes of Chaadaev, " deep misunderstanding of the role that has fallen to our lot.
Chaadaev considers the position of the Russians "happy" - if only they can correctly assess the situation. From now on, he finds that Russia has a great advantage - "to be able to contemplate and judge the world from the entire height of thought, free from unbridled passions and miserable self-interest, which in other places cloud the gaze of a person and pervert his judgments."
“Moreover,” continues Chaadaev, “I have a deep conviction that we are called upon to solve most of the problems of the social order, to complete most of the ideas that have arisen in old societies, to answer the most important questions that occupy humanity. I have often said and I repeat with pleasure: we, so to speak, by the very nature of things, are destined to be a real conscientious court in many litigations that are being conducted before the great tribunals of the human spirit and human society.
But the "Apology" remained unfinished, cut off in mid-sentence. Soon, the “basman philosopher” began to live happily again, enjoying the thought that no one understands better than him how to solve problems, but if his compatriots listen to his opinion, they will be saved and live happily, not they, so their descendants for sure . And so again salons, conversations, trips to the English Club, where Chaadaev usually sat on a sofa in a small fireplace room; when his favorite place was occupied by someone else, he showed obvious displeasure, and during the years of the Crimean War he called such persons - in the spirit of the times - "bashi-bazouks".
Imagination game
He died in 1856; a little earlier, the emperor who offended him also passed away. Later, Chaadaev will be raised to the shield, presented as a victim of the tsarist regime, and all his Philosophical Letters will be published. True, the vast majority of people will read exclusively the first epistle, postponing the others for later. But someone who would have read them all might wonder: what if the sequence of publication had then changed?
For example, the letter (third) would first appear in the Telescope, where Chaadaev reflects on the relationship between faith and reason, coming to the conclusion that, on the one hand, faith without reason is a “dreamy whim of the imagination,” but reason without faith is also cannot exist, because "there is no other mind than the mind of the subordinate", and this submission consists in serving the good and progress, which consists in the implementation of the "moral law".
Or if his reflection on the two forces of nature - gravitation and "casting" (fourth letter) had been published before, or the following letter, where he contrasts consciousness and matter, believing that they have not only individual, but also world forms and that "the world consciousness" is nothing but the world of ideas that live in the memory of mankind.
Chaadaev's office in his apartment on Novaya Basmannaya. Photo-tinto engraving from a painting by K.P. Baudry
How would readers react in this case? Some of them, probably, would have yawned, acquaintances would have praised out of politeness, having little understanding of the meaning of what was written (“too much metaphysics”). And before giving permission, the censor Boldyrev might have asked Nadezhdin: what kind of scientist is this, Chaadaev, who, without a degree, talks about such abstruse matters?
And if this time he had at his disposal the letter containing Chaadaev’s reflections on the course and meaning of our history, he would first ask to listen to the opinion of the professor of philosophy ... And then it would turn out that under no judgment of Chaadaev there is an indication of confirming sources and that his philosophical writing is just a play of imagination, fantasies about Russia, which he presents either as a stupid woman, or as an idiot-man, for whom he is ashamed in front of the collective “Princess Marya Aleksevna”, who lives in England, Germany and France.
Not only officials, but also thinking contemporaries treated Chaadaev's published epistle as a kind of "libel". Written well, in the best traditions of essayistics, where everything is entirely metaphors and aphorisms, but the author's self-conceit is as if behind his every judgment there is a scientific tome previously written by him. But in fact, instead of doing science - reading, underlining and writing out the most successful places where thoughts are expressed that correspond to his dreams. Instead of serving in the Temple of Science, sitting in a biased home library.
View of Novaya Basmannaya street in Moscow. Here in the wing of E.G. Levasheva from 1833 to 1856 lived P.Ya. Chaadaev. This is where he died
Valet Ivan Yakovlevich
Chaadaev's thoughts turned out to be consonant with many, and who only then did not use the first of his "Philosophical Letters": both the liberal public of the early 20th century and the ideologists of the Soviet era. All of them represented the inhabitant of the wing on Basmannaya as a victim of the regime, and he was just a deluded game of his own imagination, which helps reason, but is not able to replace it. As a result, he surprised everyone with flowery reasoning. Turned out to be unable to serve the state in the military field, not wanting to then step into the field of civil service, he preferred to lead the life of a private person, instructing compatriots about the past, present and future.
Chaadaev amazed his contemporaries also by the fact that he took with him everywhere the valet Ivan Yakovlevich, who was supposedly created "in the model and likeness" of his master - always elegantly dressed, like Pyotr Yakovlevich himself, practically his double. But this resemblance was only external, the “double” was not able to sit down at the table and compose a philosophical letter ... And such “Ivan Yakovlevichs”, who are likenesses of a gentleman, we have had at all times. There are many of them in philosophy (this one was likened to Derrida, that one to Heidegger, and the other almost like Wittgenstein), the same abundance of simulacra in art and politics. However, looking at the outfits of "Ivanov Yakovlevich", one should not forget that these are only valets, and not gentlemen.
PHILOSOPHICAL LETTER OF CHAADAEV - IMAGINATION, FANTASIES ON THE THEME OF RUSSIA, which he presents either as a stupid woman, or as an idiot man, for whom he is ashamed in front of the collective “Princess Marya Aleksevna”, who lives in England, Germany and France
Chaadaev turned out - wanting to be the master of minds - only the author of a pamphlet, willingly taken apart for quotations. But epistles will not correct life, you will not create a system, but you will remain only a model of a brilliant expression of private opinion, which you yourself are not able to put into practice. And that is why his letter is so fond of quoting those who are not capable of working together, "noble" dreamers with piles of books ...
One of the comedy characters Denis Fonvizin"The Brigadier" (1769) stated that only in body he was born in Russia, but his spirit belongs to the "crown of France". And today Chaadaev is willingly re-read by those who are forced to “toil” in Russia, not finding a place “worthy” of their self-importance here, who are not capable of either service or science, but full of fantasies about the best world order. At the same time, it also turns out that none of them is particularly needed by the French, German, British or American “crown”.
As a result, their heads are like a crown of thorns, the faces on the avatars are similar to the faces of Malvina and Piero - eternally detached, sad; and only in a dream, not ashamed of our past and present, they make up the Necropolis - the "city of the dead." Only, unlike Pyotr Yakovlevich, they are not able to create a philosophical letter, daily clogging social media with their “tales from the crypt”, which the collective “Princess Marya Aleksevna”, who lives outside of Russia, is so hungry for.
Vasily Vanchugov, Doctor of Philosophy
Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev
In 1836, the first letter from P.Ya. Chaadaeva. This publication ended in a big scandal. The publication of the first letter, according to A. Herzen, gave the impression of "a shot that rang out on a dark night." Emperor Nicholas I, after reading the article, expressed his opinion: "... I find that the content thereof is a mixture of impudent nonsense, worthy of a lunatic." The result of the publication: the journal was closed, the publisher N. Nadezhdin was exiled to Ust-Sysolsk (modern Syktyvkar), and then to Vologda. Chaadaev was officially declared insane.
What do we know about Chaadaev?
Of course, first of all, we recall the poem addressed to him by A.S. Pushkin, which everyone learns at school:
Love, hope, quiet glory
The deceit did not live long for us,
Gone are the funs of youth
Like a dream, like a morning mist;
But desire still burns in us,
Under the yoke of fatal power
With an impatient soul
Fatherland heed the invocation.
We wait with longing hope
Minutes of liberty of the saint,
As a young lover waits
Minutes of true goodbye.
While we burn with freedom
As long as hearts are alive for honor,
My friend, we will devote to the fatherland
Souls wonderful impulses!
Comrade, believe: she will rise,
Star of captivating happiness
Russia will wake up from sleep
And on the ruins of autocracy
Write our names!
The commentary to this poem is usually the words that Chaadaev is Pushkin's oldest friend, whom he met in his lyceum years (in 1816). Perhaps that's all.
Meanwhile, 3 poems by Pushkin are dedicated to Chaadaev, his features are embodied in the image of Onegin.
Pushkin wrote about the personality of Chaadaev in the poem “To the Portrait of Chaadaev” as follows:
He is by the will of heaven
Born in the fetters of the royal service;
He would be Brutus in Rome, Pericles in Athens,
And here he is a hussar officer.
Pushkin and Chaadaev
In 1820, Pushkin's southern exile began, and their constant communication was interrupted. But correspondence and meetings continued throughout life. On October 19, 1836, Pushkin wrote a famous letter to Chaadaev, in which he argued with the views on the destiny of Russia, expressed by Chaadaev in the first “ philosophical writing».
From the biography of P.Ya. Chaadaeva (1794-1856)
Portrait of P.Ya. Chaadaeva
Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev - Russian philosopher and publicist, in his writings sharply criticized the reality of Russian life. In the Russian Empire, his works were banned for publication.
Born into an old noble family. On the maternal side, he is the grandson of the historian M. M. Shcherbatov, the author of the 7-volume edition of Russian History from Ancient Times.
P.Ya. Chaadaev was orphaned early, his aunt, Princess Anna Mikhailovna Shcherbatova, raised him and his brother, and Prince D. M. Shcherbatov became his guardian, in his house Chaadaev received an excellent education.
Young Chaadaev listened to lectures at Moscow University, and among his friends were A. S. Griboyedov, future Decembrists N. I. Turgenev, I. D. Yakushkin.
He participated in the war of 1812 (including the Battle of Borodino, went to the bayonet attack at Kulm, was awarded the Russian Order of St. Anne and the Prussian Kulm Cross) and subsequent hostilities. Serving then in the Life Hussar Regiment, he became close friends with the young Pushkin, who was then studying at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum.
V. Favorsky "Pushkin Lyceum student"
He greatly contributed to the development of Pushkin, and later to the rescue of the poet from exile in Siberia that threatened him or imprisonment in the Solovetsky Monastery. Chaadaev was then adjutant to the commander of the guards corps, Prince Vasilchikov, and managed to get a meeting with Karamzin in order to convince him to stand up for Pushkin. Pushkin repaid Chaadaev with warm friendship and greatly appreciated his opinion: it was to him that Pushkin sent the first copy of Boris Godunov and was looking forward to a review of his work.
In 1821, unexpectedly for everyone, Chaadaev abandoned a brilliant military and court career, retired and joined the secret society of the Decembrists. But even here he did not find satisfaction for his spiritual needs. Experiencing a spiritual crisis, in 1823 he went on a trip to Europe. In Germany, Chaadaev met the philosopher F. Schelling, assimilated the ideas of Western theologians, philosophers, scientists and writers, got acquainted with the social and cultural structure of Western countries: England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy.
Returning to Russia in 1826, he lived as a hermit in Moscow for several years, comprehending and experiencing what he had seen over the years of wandering, and then began to lead an active social life, appearing in secular salons and speaking out on topical issues of history and modernity. Contemporaries noted his enlightened mind, artistic sense and noble heart - all this earned him unquestioned authority.
Chaadaev chose a peculiar way of disseminating his ideas - he expressed them in private letters. Then these ideas became public knowledge, they were discussed as journalism. In 1836, he published his first "Philosophical Letter" in the Teleskop magazine, addressed to E. Panova, whom he calls Madame.
In total, he wrote 8 "Philosophical Letters" in French. , the last of these was in 1831. In his Letters, Chaadaev outlined his philosophical and historical views on the fate of Russia. It was this view of his that was not recognized by the ruling circles and part of contemporary public opinion, the public outcry was enormous. “After Woe from Wit, there was not a single literary work that would have made such a strong impression,” A. Herzen believed.
Some even declared that they were ready, with arms in hand, to stand up for Russia, insulted by Chaadaev.
He considered a feature of the historical fate of Russia “a dull and gloomy existence, devoid of strength and energy, which did not enliven anything except atrocities, did not soften anything except slavery. No captivating memories, no graceful images in the memory of the people, no powerful teachings in its tradition ... We live in one present, in its closest limits, without past and future, among dead stagnation.
The appearance of the first “Philosophical Letter” became the reason for the division of thinking and writing people into Westerners and Slavophiles. Disputes between them do not stop today. Chaadaev, of course, was a staunch Westernizer.
Minister of Public Education Uvarov submitted a report to Nicholas I, after which the emperor officially declared Chaadaev crazy. He was doomed to a hermitage in his house on Basmannaya Street, where he was visited by a doctor who reported monthly on his condition to the tsar.
In 1836-1837. Chaadaev wrote the article “Apology of a Madman”, in which he decided to explain the features of his patriotism, his views on the high destiny of Russia: “I have not learned to love my homeland with my eyes closed, with my head bowed, with my lips locked. I find that a man can only be useful to his country if he sees it clearly; I think that the time of blind love has passed, that now we are primarily indebted to our homeland for the truth ... I have a deep conviction that we are called to solve most of the problems of the social order, to complete most of the ideas that arose in old societies, to answer the most important questions, which occupy humanity."
Chaadaev died in Moscow in 1856.
"Philosophical Letters"
Philosophical Letters" by P. Chaadaev
First letter
Chaadaev was worried about the fate of Russia, he was looking for ways to guide the country to a better future. To do this, he identified three priority areas:
“First of all, a serious classical education;
the emancipation of our slaves, which is a necessary condition for all further progress;
an awakening of the religious feeling, so that religion might emerge from the sort of lethargy in which it now finds itself.
Chaadaev’s first and most famous letter is imbued with a deeply skeptical mood towards Russia: “One of the most regrettable features of our peculiar civilization is that we are still discovering truths that have become commonplace in other countries and among peoples much more backward than we are. The fact is that we have never walked with other peoples, we do not belong to any of the known families of the human race, neither to the West nor to the East, and we have no traditions of either. We stand, as it were, outside of time; the universal upbringing of the human race has not spread to us.
“What other nations have long entered into life,” he writes further, “for us is still only speculation, theory ... Look around you. Everything seems to be on the move. We all seem to be strangers. No one has a sphere of a definite existence, there are no good customs for anything, not only rules, there is not even a family center; there is nothing that would bind, that would awaken our sympathy, disposition; there is nothing permanent, indispensable: everything passes, flows, leaving no trace either in appearance or in yourself. We seem to be at home, we are like strangers in families, we seem to roam in cities, and even more than the tribes wandering through our steppes, because these tribes are more attached to their deserts than we are to our cities.
Chaadaev describes the history of the country as follows: “First, wild barbarism, then gross superstition, then foreign domination, cruel and humiliating, the spirit of which the national authorities subsequently inherited - this is the sad story of our youth. The pores of overflowing activity, the ebullient play of the moral forces of the people - we had nothing like it.<…>Take a look around all the centuries we have lived, all the spaces we have occupied, and you will not find a single riveting memory, not a single venerable monument that would speak authoritatively about the past and draw it vividly and picturesquely. We live only in the most limited present without past and without future, among flat stagnation.
“What other peoples have is just a habit, an instinct, then we have to hammer it into our heads with a blow of a hammer. Our memories do not go beyond yesterday; we are, as it were, strangers to ourselves.”
“Meanwhile, stretching between the two great divisions of the world, between East and West, leaning with one elbow on China, the other on Germany, we should have combined in ourselves the two great principles of spiritual nature - imagination and reason, and unite history in our civilization the entire globe. This role was not given to us by providence. On the contrary, it did not seem to concern our fate at all. Denying us its beneficial effect on the human mind, it left us completely to ourselves, did not want to interfere in our affairs in anything, did not want to teach us anything. The experience of time does not exist for us. Centuries and generations have passed fruitlessly for us. Looking at us, we can say that in relation to us, the universal law of mankind has been reduced to nothing. Lonely in the world, we gave nothing to the world, took nothing from the world, we did not contribute a single thought to the mass of human ideas, we did not contribute in any way to the forward movement of the human mind, and we distorted everything that we got from this movement. . Since the very first moments of our social existence, nothing suitable for the common good of people has come out of us, not a single useful thought has germinated on the barren soil of our homeland, not a single great truth has been advanced from our midst; we did not take the trouble to create anything in the realm of the imagination, and from what was created by the imagination of others, we borrowed only deceptive appearance and useless luxury.
But Chaadaev sees the meaning of Russia in the fact that "we lived and now still live in order to teach some great lesson to distant descendants."
Second letter
In the second letter, Chaadaev expresses the idea that the progress of mankind is directed by the hand of Providence and moves through the chosen peoples and chosen people; the source of eternal light has never been extinguished among human societies; man walked along the path determined for him only in the light of the truths revealed to him by higher reason. He criticizes Orthodoxy for the fact that, unlike Western Christianity (Catholicism), it did not contribute to the liberation of the lower strata of the population from slave dependence, but, on the contrary, consolidated serfdom in the times of Godunov and Shuisky. He also criticizes monastic asceticism for its indifference to the blessings of life: “There is something truly cynical in this indifference to the blessings of life, which some of us take credit for. One of the main reasons that slows down our progress is the lack of any reflection of the elegant in our home life.
Third letter
In the third letter, Chaadaev develops the same thoughts, illustrating them with his views on Moses, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Epicurus, Homer, etc. He reflects on the relationship between faith and reason. On the one hand, faith without reason is a dreamy whim of the imagination, but reason without faith also cannot exist, because “there is no other reason than the mind of the subordinate. And this submission consists in serving the good and progress, which consists in the implementation of the “moral law”.
fourth letter
The image of God in man, in his opinion, is contained in freedom.
Fifth letter
In this letter, Chaadaev contrasts consciousness and matter, believing that they have not only individual, but also world forms. So "world consciousness" is nothing but the world of ideas that live in the memory of mankind.
sixth letter
In it, Chaadaev sets out his "philosophy of history." He believed that the history of mankind should include the names of such figures as Moses and David. The first "showed the people the true God", and the second showed "an image of sublime heroism." Then, in his opinion, comes Epicurus. He calls Aristotle "the angel of darkness." Chaadaev considers the goal of history to be the ascent to the Kingdom of God. He calls the Reformation "an unfortunate event" that divided the united Christian Europe.
seventh letter
In this letter, Chaadaev recognizes the merit of Islam and Muhammad in the eradication of polytheism and the consolidation of Europe.
Eighth letter
The purpose and meaning of history is the “great apocalyptic synthesis”, when a “moral law” is established on earth within the framework of a single planetary society.
Conclusion
Reflections...
In the "Apology of a Madman" Chaadaev agrees to recognize some of his former opinions as exaggerated, but caustically laughs at the society that fell upon him for the first philosophical letter out of "love for the fatherland."
So, in the face of Chaadaev, we see a patriot who loves his homeland, but puts love of truth higher. He contrasts the patriotism of the "Samoyed" (the common name for the indigenous peoples of Russia: the Nenets, Enets, Nganasans, Selkups and the already disappeared Sayan Samoyeds, who speak (or spoke) the languages of the Samoyed group, which together with the languages of the Finno-Ugric group form the Ural language family) to his yurt and the patriotism of an "English citizen". Love for the motherland often nourishes national hatred and "clothes the earth in mourning." Chaadaev recognizes progress and European civilization as true, and also calls for getting rid of "remnants of the past."
Chaadaev highly appreciates the activity of Peter the Great in introducing Russia to Europe and sees in this the highest meaning of patriotism. According to Chaadaev, Russia underestimates the beneficial influence that the West has had on it. All Slavophilism and patriotism are almost abusive words for him.
This does not happen often: a voice from the middle of the 19th century sounds like we are listening to a live broadcast. Actually, that's what happened. At the First Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, which remains the peak of domestic parliamentarism, a competition in civic courage unfolded. Having reached the podium, each speaker tried to impress the audience with a merciless exposure of the regime. Yevgeny Yevtushenko shouted that the Soviet State Planning Committee was like "a giant atelier for minor repairs to a naked king's dress." Yuri Afanasiev accused the congress of having formed a "Stalin-Brezhnev Supreme Soviet".
But Chaadaev won with a clear advantage. The most powerful person on the planet, Yuri Vlasov, who drifted from a weightlifter to an intellectual, repeated his bitter words from the podium: “We are an exceptional people, we belong to those nations that, as it were, are not part of humanity, but exist only to give the world some terrible lesson." And he summed it up: there should be no more “terrible lesson”.
And one more observation. Few of the deputies, having stepped onto the Ivanovskaya Square of the Kremlin, did not hold their eyes on the Tsar Bell and the Tsar Cannon. Once upon a time, Chaadaev also looked at them, whose thought Herzen preserved for posterity: “In Moscow, Chaadaev used to say, every foreigner is taken to look at a big cannon and a big bell. A cannon that can't be fired, and a bell that fell off before it rang. An amazing city in which the sights are absurd: or maybe a big bell without a tongue is a hieroglyph that expresses this vast silent country. By the way, the author of "The Past and Thoughts" was also a good aphorist. “Why is there such a frightening silence in Russia?” he asked. And he himself answered: “Because the people are sleeping or because they are painfully hit on the heads of those who have woken up.” Chaadaev, who woke up earlier than others, experienced this for himself.
On one of the last sunny days, I decided to realize a long-standing plan: to find in the necropolis of the Donskoy Monastery the graves of Chaadaev and the romantic girl Avdotya Sergeyevna Norova, who was in love with him.
At the time of their acquaintance, he was 34 years old, she was 28. Smart, who did not part with books, Dunya loved him selflessly. There was no passion in her feeling - only tenderness and care. She cooked cherry syrup for him, knitted warm stockings for the winter. He generously allowed this worship to her, and sometimes spoiled her, saying: “My angel, Dunichka!” The 49 letters of her preserved in Chaadaev's archive amaze with their reckless devotion. “Does it seem strange and unusual to you that I want to ask you for your blessing? she wrote to him one day. “I often have this desire, and it seems that if I decide on this, I would be so pleased to accept it from you, on my knees, with all the reverence that I have for you.” And even more poignantly: "I would be afraid to die if I could assume that my death could cause your regret."
Some researchers consider Norova, with her dreamy look and long arches of eyebrows, the prototype of Tatyana Larina. Perhaps this comes from the "hint" of Pushkin, who wrote: "The second Chadaev is my Evgeny." And what is Onegin without Tatyana? And yet this version is unlikely to be true. There is only one rapprochement between them: both were the first to confess their love to their idols.
Dunya was weak from childhood, often ill, and when, before she reached 37, she quietly faded away (many believed - from love), her relatives did not blame Chaadaev. But he himself, having survived Norova by two decades, was shocked by her death. After his death, on April 14, 1856, it turned out that in Chaadaev’s will “in case of sudden death”, the second number was a request: “Try to bury me in the Donskoy Monastery near the grave of Avdotya Sergeevna Norova.” He couldn't have given her a better gift.
There is no equality in the cemetery
These are the two graves on the old Donskoy churchyard that I wanted to find. At the reference stand, I quickly found the name of Chaadaev in the list of the buried, who was assigned the number 26-Sh. But Norova, apparently, seemed to the administration a figure too insignificant to be included in the list of VIP dead. Nevertheless, I found a place of rest for both of them, buried near the Small Cathedral. Chaadaev's grave is covered by a cracked slab. And at its head rise two modest granite columns a meter and a half high, set above the ashes of Dunya and her mother.
I grabbed a camera to take a picture of this inconspicuous corner, having previously laid scarlet roses on Dunya's grave. They would simply blaze against the background of a gray cemetery landscape. But it turned out that flowers in the Donskoy Monastery are not for sale - only candles.
Fire that can blind
You can’t apply the famous Nekrasov line about Dobrolyubov to Chaadaev: “Like a woman, he loved his homeland.” We will talk more about Chaadaev's attitude to his homeland. The ladies, who always surrounded this tall, slender handsome man with gray-blue eyes and a face as if sculpted from marble, he tried to keep at a distance. In part, this coincided with the advice of his wise friend Ekaterina Levashova: “Providence has given you a light too bright, too blinding for our darkness, isn’t it better to introduce it little by little than to blind people, as it were, with the Tabor radiance and make them fall face down on the ground?” For those who have not looked into the Bible for a long time, let me remind you: on Mount Tabor near Nazareth, the transfiguration of Christ took place, after which His face shone like the sun.
But there was another reason as well. Historian and philosopher Mikhail Gershenzon in the monograph Chaadaev. Life and Thought," published in 1907, delicately summarized it in two lines of footnote: "There seems to be reason to believe that he suffered from congenital atrophy of the sexual instinct." Dmitry Merezhkovsky spoke with equal restraint: “Like many Russian romantics of the 20s and 30s, Nikolai Stankevich, Konstantin Aksakov, Mikhail Bakunin, he was a “born virgin”.
To appreciate how far the inquisitive thought of researchers has advanced since then, I will refer to the book by Konstantin Rotikov “Another Petersburg”, dedicated to the gay culture of the city on the Neva, among the representatives of which he ranked Chaadaev. Closing the topic, I would like to note that Olga Vainshtein, the author of the major study Dendy, strongly disagrees with Rotikov. In her opinion, such coldness towards women was typical of the first generation of dandies, starting with the legendary George Brummal, who never had mistresses, preached strict masculinity and, being a trendsetter, gave humanity a black tailcoat. The one that no one knew how to wear as elegantly as Chaadaev, Russia's first dandy.
He looked no worse in a hussar uniform. At the age of 18, Chaadaev participated in the Battle of Borodino and fought his way to Paris. He fought near Tarutino and Maly Yaroslavets, participated in the main battles on German soil. For the battle near Kulm he was awarded the Order of St. Anne, and for the difference in the campaign - the Iron Cross.
The first meeting with Europe had a radical impact on Chaadaev's worldview. Russian officers, many of whom, like himself, knew French better than their native, discovered something new for themselves in Paris.
Rendezvous with Europe
“We were young upstarts,” Chaadaev later wrote in his sarcastic manner, “and did not contribute to the common treasury of peoples, be it some tiny solar system, following the example of the Poles subject to us, or some poor algebra, according to example of these non-Christian Arabs. We were treated well because we behaved like well-bred people, because we were courteous and modest, as befits beginners who have no other right to general respect than a slender frame.
The defeated French were cheerful and open. Prosperity was felt in their way of life, the achievements of culture were admired. And the sign on one of the houses - the memory of the revolution - amazed: "Street of Human Rights"! What could representatives of a country where the word "personality" was invented by N. M. Karamzin only in the 19th century know about this? And in Western Europe, this concept, along with “individuality”, turned out to be in demand five centuries earlier, without which there would be no Renaissance. Russia skipped this stage. Once at home, the victors of Napoleon saw their homeland with new eyes - an effect that Soviet soldiers would also face in a century and a half. The picture that awaited them at home turned out to be difficult: mass poverty, lack of rights, arbitrariness of the authorities.
But back to the hero of our story. Count Pozzo di Borgo, a Russian diplomat originally from Corsica, once said: if he were in power, he would force Chaadaev to constantly travel around Europe so that she would see "a completely secular Russian." It was not possible to implement this project on a full scale, but in 1823 Chaadaev went on a three-year trip to England, France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. Pushkin, who was languishing in Chisinau at that time, complained: "They say that Chaadaev is going abroad - my favorite hope was to travel with him - now God knows when we will meet." Alas, the poet until the end of his life remained "restricted to travel abroad."
The purpose of the tour made by Chaadaev was quite accurately defined in the letter of recommendation given to him by the English missionary Charles Cook: "To study the causes of the moral well-being of Europeans and the possibility of its instillation in Russia." Consideration of this issue formed an essential part of the "Philosophical Letters" that Chaadaev still had to write, there will be eight of them in total. He left with the firm intention of not returning. Speaking four languages, Chaadaev easily made acquaintance with leading European philosophers and enjoyed an intellectual feast. However, it turned out that his connection with Russia is stronger than he thought. And Pyotr Yakovlevich decided to return. “Chadaev was the first Russian, in fact, who ideologically visited the West and found his way back,” writes Osip Mandelstam. - The trace left by Chaadaev in the minds of Russian society is so deep and indelible that the question involuntarily arises: is it not a diamond that has been drawn over glass?
"Philosophical writing" and its consequences
Chaadaev belonged to the circle of people who were called "Decembrists without December." He was a friend of almost everyone who came out on December 14, 1825 on Senate Square, and he himself was a member of the Welfare Union, but formally: he did not take a practical part in the affairs. The news of the drama that took place in St. Petersburg caught him abroad, and he was acutely worried about this misfortune. The bitterness that settled in him forever was reflected in the Philosophical Letters, which became the main work of his life.
And it all started with a trifle - with a letter from Ekaterina Panova, a young advanced lady who was interested in politics and even allowed herself - scary to say! - "pray for the Poles, because they fought for freedom." She liked to talk with Chaadaev about religious questions, but it began to seem to her that he had lost his former disposition towards her and did not believe that her interest in this subject was sincere. “If you write me a few words in response, I will be happy,” concluded Panova. An impeccably correct man, Chaadaev immediately sat down to write a response letter, if in the age of text messages 20 pages of dense text can be called that. It took a year and a half, and, putting an end to the letter, he decided that it was probably too late to send it. Thus was born the first and most famous "Philosophical letter" of Chaadaev. Pyotr Yakovlevich was pleased: it seemed to him that he had found a natural, unconstrained form for presenting complex philosophical issues.
What was revealed to readers in the long-suffering and repeatedly thought-out thoughts that he tried to convey to them? According to Mandelstam, they turned out to be "a strict perpendicular restored to traditional Russian thinking." It was indeed a completely new view of Russia, "perpendicular" to the official point of view, a harsh but honest diagnosis. Why do we not know how to live intelligently in the reality that surrounds us? Why do we have to “hammer in the head with a blow of a hammer” what has turned into instinct and habit among other peoples? Comparing his country with Europe, Chaadaev, who called himself a "Christian philosopher", paid special attention to the role of religion in the historical development of Russia. He was convinced that it was “uprooted, secluded by Christianity, taken from an infected source, from a corrupted, fallen Byzantium, which refused the unity of the church. The Russian Church has become enslaved to the state, and this has become the source of all our slavery.” The willingness of the clergy to submit to secular authority was a historical feature of Orthodoxy, and one must try very hard not to notice that this process is taking place even today.
Here is one of the most powerful and bitter passages in the Philosophical Letters: “The ideas of order, duty, law, which make up, as it were, the atmosphere of the West, are alien to us, and everything in our private and public life is accidental, fragmented and absurd. Our mind is devoid of the discipline of the Western mind, Western syllogism is unknown to us. Our moral sense is extremely superficial and shaky, we are almost indifferent to good and evil, to truth and falsehood.
In all our long life, we have not enriched humanity with a single thought, but only looked for ideas borrowed from others. So we live in one narrow present, without a past and without a future - we go nowhere without going anywhere, and we grow without maturing.
The "letter" published in the 15th issue of the "Telescope" magazine under the innocent heading "Science and Art" was greeted, according to Chaadaev, with "an ominous cry." The abuse heaped upon him could be included in an anthology of the highest achievements of this genre. “Never, nowhere, in any country, has anyone ever allowed themselves such impudence,” said Philipp Wiegel, vice president of the Department of Foreign Faiths, a German by birth, a patriot by profession. “The adored mother was scolded, slapped on the cheek.” Dmitry Tatishchev, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, turned out to be a no less ferocious critic: “Chadaev poured out such terrible hatred on his fatherland that could only be instilled in him by hellish forces.” And the poet Nikolai Yazykov, who became close to the Slavophiles at the end of his life, scolded Chaadaev in verse: “Russia is completely alien to you, / Your native country: / Its legends are holy / You hate everything in full. / You renounced them cowardly, / You kiss the shoes of dads. Here he got excited. Chaadaev, who highly valued the social principles in Catholicism, its close ties with culture and science, nevertheless remained faithful to the Orthodox rite.
The students of Moscow University, who reminded me of the class vigilance of modern "Nashists", came to the trustee of the Moscow educational district, Count Stroganov, and declared that they were ready to stand up for offended Russia with weapons in their hands. The consciousness of the youth was assessed, but no weapons were issued to them.
Chaadaev's letter also gained international resonance. The Austrian ambassador in St. Petersburg, Count Ficquelmont, sent a report to Chancellor Metternich, in which he announced: “In Moscow, in a literary periodical called Telescope, a letter was printed written to a Russian lady by a retired colonel Chaadaev ... It fell like a bomb in the midst of Russian vanity and those principles of religious and political primacy, to which the capital is very inclined.
The fate of Chaadaev, as expected, was decided at the top. Emperor Nicholas I, of course, did not finish reading his essay, but drew a resolution: “After reading the article, I find that its content is a mixture of impudent nonsense worthy of a lunatic.” This was not a literary assessment, but a medical diagnosis, very similar to the one that the autocrat honored Lermontov as well, having leafed through A Hero of Our Time. And the car turned over. A commission of inquiry was created, and although no traces of a conspiracy were found, the measures turned out to be decisive: the Telescope was closed, the editor Nadezhdin was exiled to Ust-Sysolsk, and the censor Boldyrev, by the way, the rector of Moscow University, was dismissed from his post. Chaadaev was officially declared insane. It is noteworthy that Chatsky in the comedy "Woe from Wit" - in the manuscript Griboyedov called him Chadsky - had the same fate: rumor considered him crazy, And the play, by the way, was written five years earlier than the royal diagnosis sounded. Real art overtakes life.
The decision of the sovereign-emperor turned out to be truly Jesuit. According to his instructions, Benckendorff, chief of the Third Department, sent an order to the Moscow governor, Prince Golitsyn: “His Majesty commands that you entrust the treatment of him (Chaadaev) to a skilled physician, making it his duty to visit Mr. Chaadaev every morning, and that an order be made, so that Mr. Chaadaev does not expose himself to the influence of the current damp and cold air. Humane, isn't it? But the subtext is simple: do not leave the house! And a year after the removal of supervision from Chaadaev, a new instruction followed: “Do not dare to write anything!”
General Alexei Orlov, who was considered the favorite of the emperor, in a conversation with Benckendorff asked him to put in a good word for Chaadaev, who was in trouble, emphasizing that he believed in the future of Russia. But the chief of gendarmes waved it off: “Russia's past was amazing, its present is more than magnificent. As for its future, it is higher than anything that the wildest imagination can imagine. Here, my friend, is the point of view from which Russian history should be considered and written. This optimistic thesis seemed vaguely familiar to me. And although not immediately, I remembered: this is the official concept, a squeeze from the discussion that has made a noise not so long ago about what a textbook on the history of Russia should be like.
Chaadaev gave his detractor an answer full of dignity and civic courage: “Believe me, I love my fatherland more than any of you ... But I don’t know how to love with my eyes closed, with my head bowed, with mute lips.”
Woe to the mind
For Pyotr Yakovlevich, who was five years older than Pushkin and was considered his mentor, it was especially important to find out the opinion of a friend about the article in Telescope, and he sent him a print of it. At one time, the poet dedicated three poetic messages to Chaadaev - more than to anyone, including Arina Rodionovna. And in a Chisinau diary he wrote about him: “I will never forget you. Your friendship has replaced happiness for me - my cold soul can love you alone ”(Rotikov, mentioned above, could have strained at this point).
Pushkin found himself in a difficult position. He could not offend his friend, about whom he wrote: “At the moment of death over the hidden abyss / You supported me with an unsleeping hand.” And now Chaadaev is hanging over the abyss. He nevertheless wrote a letter to him, but he brought out on the last page: “A crow will not peck out a crow’s eyes,” after which he hid three sheets in a desk drawer. In many ways, Pushkin agreed with his friend, but not with his assessment of Russian history. “I am far from delighted with everything that I see around me ... but I swear on honor,” he wrote, “that for nothing in the world I would not want to change my fatherland or have a different history. In addition to the history of our ancestors. The way God gave it to us." What can I say - high spirit, high words!
Valery Jalagonia
Echo of the Planet, No. 45
Unlike his characters, Chaadaev lived far from human passions and died alone.
Childhood and youth
Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev was born on May 27 (June 7), 1794 in Moscow. Father Yakov Petrovich served as an adviser to the Nizhny Novgorod Criminal Chamber, his mother was Princess Natalya Mikhailovna, daughter of Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich Shcherbatov. The parents of Peter and Mikhail, his older brother, died early, and in 1797 the boys were taken into care by their mother's elder sister Anna Shcherbatova.
In 1808, Petr Chaadaev, having received a decent education at home, entered Moscow University. Among his teachers were the legal historian Fyodor Bause, the researcher of the manuscripts of the Holy Scriptures of Christian Friedrich Mattei. Philosopher Johann Bule called Chaadaev his favorite student. Already in his student years, Chaadaev showed interest in fashion. The memoirist Mikhail Zhikharev described the portrait of a contemporary as follows:
"The art of dressing Chaadaev elevated almost to the level of historical significance."
Pyotr Yakovlevich was famous for his ability to dance and conduct a secular conversation, which put him in a favorable light among women. Attention from the opposite sex, as well as intellectual superiority over his peers, made Chaadaev a "hard-hearted self-lover."
Military service and social activities
The Patriotic War of 1812 found the Chaadaev brothers in the Moscow Society of Mathematicians. Young people joined the Semyonovsky Life Guards Regiment with the rank of ensigns. For the courage shown in the Battle of Borodino, Pyotr Yakovlevich was promoted to ensign, awarded the Order of St. Anna and the Kulm cross for a bayonet attack in the battle of Kulm. He also participated in the Tarutinsky maneuver, the battle of Maloyaroslavets.
In 1813, Chaadaev transferred to the Akhtyrsky hussar regiment. The Decembrist Sergei Muravyov-Apostol explained this act of Pyotr Yakovlevich with a desire to show off in a hussar uniform. In 1816, he moved to the Life Guards of the Hussar Regiment, promoted to lieutenant. A year later, Chaadaev became the adjutant of the future General Illarion Vasilchikov.
The hussar regiment was stationed in Tsarskoye Selo. It was here, in the historian's house, that Chaadaev met. The great Russian poet dedicated the poems “To the Portrait of Chaadaev” (1820), “In the Country Where I Forgot the Worries of Previous Years” (1821), “Why Cold Doubts” (1824) to the philosopher, and Pyotr Yakovlevich, being a friend of Pushkin, “forced him to think”, talking on literary and philosophical topics.
Vasilchikov entrusted Chaadaev with serious matters, for example, a report on a riot in the Semyonovsky Life Guards Regiment. After a meeting with the emperor in 1821, the adjutant, promising a bright military future, resigned. The news shocked society and gave rise to many legends.
According to the official version, Chaadaev, who once served in the Semyonovsky regiment, did not endure the punishment of his close comrades. For other reasons, the philosopher was disgusted with the idea of informing on former fellow soldiers. Contemporaries also assumed that Chaadaev was late for a meeting with Alexander I, because he was choosing a wardrobe for a long time, or that the sovereign expressed an idea that contradicted the ideas of Peter Yakovlevich.
After parting with military affairs, Chaadaev plunged into a protracted spiritual crisis. Due to health problems, in 1823 he set out on a trip to Europe with no plans to return to Russia. On trips, Pyotr Yakovlevich actively updated the library with religious books. He was especially attracted to works whose main idea was the interweaving of scientific progress and Christianity.
Chaadaev's health deteriorated, and in 1826 he decided to return to Russia. At the border, he was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the Decembrist uprising that had taken place a year earlier. They took a receipt from Pyotr Yakovlevich stating that he was not a member of secret societies. However, this information was obviously false.
Back in 1814, Chaadaev was a member of the St. Petersburg Lodge of United Friends, and reached the rank of "master". The philosopher quickly became disillusioned with the idea of secret societies, and in 1821 he completely left his associates. Then he joined the Northern Society. Later, he criticized the Decembrists, believing that the armed uprising pushed Russia back half a century.
Philosophy and creativity
Returning to Russia, Chaadaev settled near Moscow. His neighbor was Ekaterina Panova. The philosopher began a correspondence with her - first business, then friendly. Young people discussed mainly religion, faith. Chaadaev's answer to Panova's spiritual throwing was the Philosophical Letters, created in 1829-1831.
Written in the epistolary genre, the work aroused the indignation of political and religious figures. For the thoughts expressed in the work, he recognized Chaadaev and Panova as crazy. The philosopher was put under medical supervision, and the girl was sent to a psychiatric hospital.
The Philosophical Letters were sharply criticized because they debunked the cult of Orthodoxy. Chaadaev wrote that the religion of the Russian people, unlike Western Christianity, does not free people from slavery, but, on the contrary, enslaves them. The publicist later called these ideas "revolutionary Catholicism."
The magazine "Telescope", in which in 1836 the first of eight "Philosophical Letters" was published, was closed, the editor was exiled to hard labor. Until 1837, Chaadaev underwent daily medical examinations to prove his mental well-being. The supervision of the philosopher was removed on the condition that he "do not dare to write anything."
This promise Chaadaev broke in the same 1837, writing "The Apology of a Madman" (not published during his lifetime). Trud responded to accusations of "negative patriotism", spoke about the reasons for the backwardness of the Russian people.
Pyotr Yakovlevich believed that Russia is located between East and West, but in its essence does not belong to any of the cardinal points. A nation that strives to draw the best of two cultures and at the same time not become a follower of either of them is doomed to degradation.
The only ruler about whom Chaadaev spoke with respect was the one who returned Russia to its former greatness and power by introducing elements of the West into Russian culture. Chaadaev was a Westerner, but the Slavophils treated him with respect. Proof of this is the words of Alexei Khomyakov, a prominent representative of Slavophilism:
“An enlightened mind, an artistic sense, a noble heart - these are the qualities that attracted everyone to him; at a time when, apparently, the thought plunged into a heavy and involuntary sleep. He was especially dear to the fact that he himself was awake and encouraged others.
Personal life
Ill-wishers called Chaadaev a "ladies' philosopher": he was constantly surrounded by women, he knew how to make even wives devoted to their husbands fall in love with him. At the same time, the personal life of Peter Yakovlevich did not work out.
There were three loves in Chaadaev's life. Ekaterina Panova, the addressee of the Philosophical Letters, suffered the most from male ambition. Even after her release from the psychiatric hospital, the girl did not blame her lover for her misfortune. She was looking for a meeting with a philosopher, but died without a response letter, a lonely, legless old woman.
Chaadaev served as a prototype for Eugene Onegin from the novel of the same name by Alexander Pushin, and Avdotya Norova acted as the role. She fell in love with the philosopher without a memory, and when he had no money left to pay for the servants, she offered to look after him for free, but he left for Moscow, to the Levashov family.
Avdotya was a sickly and weak girl, and therefore she died early - at the age of 36. Chaadaev, who left Norova's letters unanswered for a long time, visited her in the hospital shortly before his death.
Ekaterina Levashova, although she was a married woman, sincerely loved Chaadaev. Her husband and older children did not understand why she did not take money from the philosopher for housing. Catherine's reverent attitude towards the guest lasted 6 years, until her death.
Death
“At 5 o’clock in the afternoon, one of the Moscow old-timers Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev, known in almost all circles of our metropolitan society, died after a short illness.”
He died of pneumonia, a little before the age of 63. Memoirist Mikhail Zhikharev once asked the philosopher why he runs from women, “like hell from incense,” and he replied:
"You will find out after my death."
Chaadaev ordered to be buried near his beloved women - in the Donskoy Monastery at the grave of Avdotya Norova or in the Intercession Church near Ekaterina Levashova. The philosopher found his last rest at the Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow.
Quotes
"Vanity breeds a fool, arrogance breeds malice."
“No one considers himself entitled to receive anything without at least taking the trouble to reach out for it. There is one exception - happiness. They consider it perfectly natural to have happiness without doing anything to acquire it, that is, to deserve it.
“The unbeliever, in my opinion, is likened to a clumsy circus performer on a tightrope, who, standing on one leg, awkwardly seeks the balance of the other.”
“The past is no longer under our control, but the future depends on us.”
Bibliography
- 1829-1831 - "Philosophical Letters"
- 1837 - "A Madman's Apology"
